There isn’t a single black or minority ethnic (BME) chief executive in England’s 50 unitary local authorities and many experts believe progress on diversity in local government has been rolled back as a result of austerity.

Derrick Anderson, one of the very few BME people to be chief executive of a London borough, says he is shocked, but not surprised by today’s lack of diversity in local government.

Huge effect of ethnicity on life chances revealed in official UK figures

Read more

“The gains we made, the battles we fought in tackling race inequality and ensuring we have role models at the top of our institutions have been completely rolled back,” says the former chief executive of Lambeth council.

The stark figures have been highlighted by the Colour of Power - an examination into the lack of BME representation in the upper echelons of power in Britain, in conjunction with campaign group Operation Black Vote, the Guardian and executive search company Green Park.

Back in the nineties Anderson was part of a growing group of BME local authority chief executives around London, including Manny Lewis, who remains managing director of Watford council, and Dorian Leatham, the former chief executive of Hillingdon council.

Public appointments are still not diverse enough | Peter Riddell

Read more

The hope then, explains Anderson, was that Britain was becoming much more comfortable with itself, and that there was a climate in which BME talent was recognised and people were able to fulfil their potential and rise to the top. ,

So why have things gone backwards? Anderson argues that austerity and political expediency has spurred decision-makers to revert to the old ways of doing things, including hiring people in the image of themselves rather than searching more widely to build shortlists based on key competencies and skills, wherever they lie.

As cost-cutting restructures are made among senior staff, promotions invariably happen from within a small pool that is limited in diversity. “There is no significant political pressure to look more widely, so shortlists end up being almost entirely white,” explains the former chief executive.

Play Video

2:25

The colour of power: why is the British establishment so white? – video

Rita Patel, chair of Operation Black Vote, agrees that austerity has taken an adverse toll on BME numbers - a demographic that was already thin on the ground at middle-management level too.

“When middle management is being culled to save money it can often, by default, wipe out a large section of BME staff, because there wasn’t a big number in the first place,” says Patel, who has been a councillor in Leicester since 2011.

“The real challenge to tackling the lack of BME diversity at the top is whether or not we truly value it, recognise the real need for it and are prepared to champion a commitment to it at every level of management and leadership,” she adds.

Patel says that things have changed over the past 30 years in which she has worked on community development and equality issues locally and nationally. Three decades ago, she remembers being in meetings with senior officers “who frankly lacked the basic knowledge about how their policy suggestions would affect the different communities they served”.

Over the years, things have changed and diversity has become less about lipservice, acknowledges Patel. “There is a recognition that diversity should be at the core of any authority wishing to be in the best shape to serve all its citizens, rather than something that is bolted-on,” she says. The problem is that progress to translate this into actual delivery has moved at a glacial pace.

Councils are busy grappling with how to meet rising demand with shrinking budgets, but austerity should not lay waste to diversity. In these turbulent times, both Patel and Anderson agree that meeting the challenges of inequality at the top of public services has to be about leadership - and challenging what that means.

“I would argue that austerity and the increasing new challenges it brings calls for leaders that first and foremost understand the needs of their citizens,” says Patel. An all-white (and practically all-male) sweep of leaders just won’t do.

Raj Tulsiani, chief executive of Green Park, is calling on public sector organisations to do more to deliver sustainable change. He wants public bodies to ask themselves what has stopped them from making such change already, rather than simply asking whether they should make changes to the ethnic composition of their leadership teams.

“I am convinced that central government and the public sector would like to better serve and represent the UK population but clearly its supply chain and recruitment processes are not helping to make diverse hires at board and leadership level nor build a diverse pipeline for senior roles that reflect the UK’s management population,” he points out.

Tulsiani believes the public sector as a whole needs to address the levels of dissatisfaction among staff over a lack of diversity and reposition itself to become an employer actively chosen by people from diverse groups and address the reason why so few BME candidates are getting promoted to the highest levels of the sector.

Sign up for your free Guardian Public Leaders newsletter with comment and sector views sent direct to you every month. Follow us: @Guardianpublic.

Looking for a job in central or local government, or need to recruit public service staff? Take a look at Guardian Jobs.

• This article was amended on 26 October 2017. An earlier version incorrectly said Derrick Anderson was the first BME person to be chief executive of Lambeth council.